The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
Anti-abortion protestors demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on Thursday, June 13, 2024, in Washington. The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court's first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The decision could lessen the intensity of the abortion issue in the November elections, with Democrats already energized and voting against restrictions on reproductive rights.But the high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient's health is at serious risk.
President Joe Biden's administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA's drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency's scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
Federal laws already protect doctors from having to perform abortions, or give any other treatment that goes against their beliefs, Kavanaugh wrote. "The plaintiffs have not identified any instances where a doctor was required, notwithstanding conscience objections, to perform an abortion or to provide other abortion-related treatment that violated the doctor's conscience since mifepristone's 2000 approval," he wrote.
Mifepristone Abortion FDA Kavanaugh Roe V. Wade Elections Drug Approval
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